When I found out that this was the next hymn that Family Conferences wanted us to photograph a background image for, I wasn’t initially excited.

It’s February. We’ve long put all the Thanksgiving decorations away.

But then I asked myself, “What does ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ look like?”

And bingo, this picture popped into my head.

A picture of someone praying at a table.

Of course, there a million different ways once could illustrate this song. But “praying at a table” seemed to ring a bell with me.

And of course, there are a million different moods and angles and props you could use to actually take a picture of “praying at a table”. But for me, in context of this song, I wanted a picture that was simple, warm and reverent in tone.

And so I went and found a place in our house that I thought could work, and proceeded to do a “selfie” shoot!

And this is a behind the scenes video of what I went through to take it. 🙂

Now, if you were observant, you would have noticed that it would have been quite impossible for me to get the picture above under the lighting conditions you saw in the video….there was way too much light coming in through the curtains! This is what the pictures were turning out like while I was recording the video:

Not so thrilling.

But thankfully, it wasn’t a hard problem to fix. Can you guess?

I just left all my stuff up, waited for the sun to set and re-shot the scene after it was dark outside! Now the background was no longer distracting.

Going Deeper

So, question: do I have permission to use the photos I took on this photoshoot however I want?

I’m the one who took them and I’m the one in the picture, right? But I was taking the pictures on private property. Do I need to get the property owner’s permission (ie. Mom and Dad) to use pictures I take on their property or of their stuff?

And what if I had decided to use a model (ie. a sibling)? Would I need to get their permission to use a picture of them (even if their face wasn’t showing)? If so, how would I need to get their permission? Does it need to be in writing?

And what if I had decided to include their face? What then?

And what if it had been a friend in the picture?

Or a stranger?

Or what if there happened to be some recognizable work of art hanging in the background? Or a logo on my shirt? Or it was taken in a restaurant? Or at Disney World?

How could I use a picture then?! What am I allowed to sell and what am I not allowed to sell? If uploading photos on a stock site requires special releases, are special releases needed to upload them anywhere else? Do I need permission to post a picture on Facebook? What about a portfolio?

Ugh, the whole thing can be so complicated! If you want to use a picture for more than just personal use (and by the way, what exactly does “personal use” mean?), you need to know some stuff about photo permissions.